Not every app needs to be run with "full privileges" (or "as root" as some might call it), but it does usually end up being a binary decision on most distros if you're not careful. Either it can change everything or it can only affect the entire user profile it's running under. Bwrap and friends allow you to do a lot of extra isolation and get much more granular, but non-root console-only apps are generally safe to run (and safer still to run under their own user instead of yours).